[cstavish]

In 2014, while in college, I did a co-op rotation at the Bombardier Transportation facility in Pittsburgh, PA. The rail division may be based in Germany, but there's a sizable rail engineering contingent in Pittsburgh. I worked with a lot of good people and engineers there--I hope they do alright. Even in 2014 there was grumbling by the engineers about upper management, and I remember attending an "all-hands" meeting where a visiting executive talked of belt-tightening. In a fairly tone-deaf delivery, he spoke of limiting his own business-class international travel.

[tormeh]

>In a fairly tone-deaf delivery, he spoke of limiting his own business-class international travel.

I am reliably informed that business travel sucks donkey ass, (almost) regardless of class. It's tone deaf because travel has positive connotations to most people, not because he's out of touch with reality. To a business traveler, economy class is adding insult to injury.

[totalZero]

I am reliably informed (by Kayak) that the cheapest direct flight from JFK to Heathrow, one week from today, costs $901 in economy class on British Airways, while the cheapest business class ticket costs $5451 on Virgin Atlantic.

The saying "A fool and his money are soon parted" extends to corporations, too.

[gaius]

Yes and no. I remember back in the day an exec taking a Concorde flight from NYC to London to tell us that if we could all manage to save $5/day, there would be no layoffs... Yeah, he was wrong about that, but he would have gotten loads of airmiles...

[Frogolocalypse]

I'm the same with my interactions with Bombardier. Every time I've come into contact with them in business, or through networking functions, I've noticed what a good group of people they've been.